it seems to me you do not read what i say, who is the ignorant now when i said twice that i have reached lvl 50. i can not judge on SL yet, but one thing i know is that i consider closing rifts and zone events are epic/cool. specially the one i just participated in in cape jule.

Ayo

the epic life quest chain starts at like level 18(?) or so, maybe earlier, and the epic water saga quest chain needs you to complete Abysall Precipice dungeon at level 50 in either normal or expert mode.

aside from the epic quest chains, I recommend that you try the chronicles at level 50, the are a LOT of fun and progress the storyline quite nicely, the solo chronicle is quite a good example of what to expect.

{I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it. }

it seems to me you do not read what i say, who is the ignorant now when i said twice that i have reached lvl 50. i can not judge on SL yet, but one thing i know is that i consider closing rifts and zone events are epic/cool. specially the one i just participated in in cape jule.

No, i did read what you where saying, but i think you actually getting to 50 without finding something epic was BS, so on that basis i perceived you lied just to bash the game.

---------- Post added 2012-11-21 at 11:59 PM ----------

Originally Posted by Nykolas

No, i did read what you where saying, but i think you actually getting to 50 without finding something epic was BS, so on that basis i perceived you lied just to bash the game.

Or you are not playing the game to its full extent so therefore not experiencing anything epic, the fact you did not know that there where epic quests proves my point i think.
And also the fact you leveled exclusively through Instant adventure so of course you are going to miss most if not ALL story related things.

No, i did read what you where saying, but i think you actually getting to 50 without finding something epic was BS, so on that basis i perceived you lied just to bash the game.

---------- Post added 2012-11-21 at 11:59 PM ----------

Or you are not playing the game to its full extent so therefore not experiencing anything epic, the fact you did not know that there where epic quests proves my point i think.
And also the fact you leveled exclusively through Instant adventure so of course you are going to miss most if not ALL story related things.

come on, it is a subjective matter, you might find something to be epic but i won't, if you actually read i did say

Originally Posted by mandus

Daily quests : they are good, i like the close rifts / kill rift creatures. because i like closing rifts.

Originally Posted by mandus

nothing epic is in the story , or the story quests. the only cool thing i ever saw was in stillmoor where you see what happened with one of the generals. and how he choose the wrong path.

Originally Posted by mandus

it seems to me you do not read what i say, who is the ignorant now when i said twice that i have reached lvl 50. i can not judge on SL yet, but one thing i know is that i consider closing rifts and zone events are epic/cool. specially the one i just participated in in cape jule.

having a different opinion/taste does not mean i am a liar.

Originally Posted by Nykolas

No, i did read what you where saying, but i think you actually getting to 50 without finding something epic was BS, so on that basis i perceived you lied just to bash the game.

i am not bashing the game, the game has a many variety of things to do, it is just that little of it was interesting.

Originally Posted by Nykolas

And also the fact you leveled exclusively through Instant adventure so of course you are going to miss most if not ALL story related things.

and i quote

Originally Posted by mandus

i am still level 50, i did 70% of my leveling through questing. no "epic" quest was available, all there is go collect x, dig Y , kill z, and a couple of escort quests.

come on, it is a subjective matter, you might find something to be epic but i won't, if you actually read i did say

having a different opinion/taste does not mean i am a liar.

Im commenting on what you said in your first and second post not what you put in the later ones, you failed to mention that you found closing rifts epic until one of your more recent posts, sorry if i sound all mad and i agree that epicness is subjective, but at the start it seemed like you where just trying to bash the game when you had very little knowledge of it, as i have played since beta, that kind of pissed me off, the moment you said there are no epic quests what so ever i kinda flipped, i have many hours invested in this game and i literally love it (yes i have no life) i have actually wrote to the creators and personally thanked them, so seeing misinformed posts like that really pissed me off. Especially when its to a new and interested player, mis informed comments like that put people off games, and the last thing RIFT needs right now is people giving out crap like that. i apologize for being so angsty about it.

I play wow too, and im pretty pissed off with blizzard on what they have done to the cheaters, whilst also punishing innocent people GG bllizz. so im pretty pissed off atm 2 years to fix a bug which is used for explotation then wrongly accusing quite a few people. /rant

maybe the reason i say there are no epic quests is because they are all presented in the old way of reading the quest log and very little scenes.

comparing to the last 3 mmos i tried (star wars , guild wars 2 , the secret world) all of them presented most if not all of their missions with voice acting. which was more engaging and less reading.

Yeah, voice acting is lacking a bit. i don't like gw2 quests, the way you talk to them on a cut scene. my characters face always bugs out and i have one eye looks gross, and the voice actors are a bit wack feels like the whole game is voiced by 3 people, and when they put on brittish/english accents i want to kill myself (im form england) As for SW:TOR, its known for its story quests, its arguably the best thing about the game.

maybe the reason i say there are no epic quests is because they are all presented in the old way of reading the quest log and very little scenes.

comparing to the last 3 mmos i tried (star wars , guild wars 2 , the secret world) all of them presented most if not all of their missions with voice acting. which was more engaging and less reading.

I'm not sure you understand the context of Nykolas's use of the term 'epic'. Epic isn't necessarily describing "amazingly awesome" but is literally an epic quest which spans the entirety of your leveling experience.

1. SERVER POPULATION/BALANCE. I've read forum and blog comments of servers being only lightly-populated and/or imbalanced between factions, especially prior to the expansion release. A couple of player bloggers mentioned this specifically as the reason they chose to unsub. What is the reality here? Obviously, I would seek to join a higher-pop server because I like a lot of "MMO" in my "MMO" but what has been your experience?

To a large extent they removed factions, they still exist, but for everything other than open PvP on a PvP server or for those who roleplay, they are essentially one faction. Server population depends where you play, NA is healthier than the EU, the EU has one busy server Icewatch, the others (there are only 4 in total on the EU) range between low and virtually empty (Bloodiron - which is the PvP server), NA is down to one PvP server and that is low population.

The population increased a bit, some peolpe returned, but there are still far less playing than there were pre-SWTOR, some people were a bit delusional on the effect SL was goign to have.

Originally Posted by garyscmh

2. PVP OPPORTUNITIES. I'm fine with PVE elements, but I find that I REALLY like really good PVP challenges once I've gotten a handle on my class & abilities. I have read varied comments on the quality of Rift PVP, everything from "it sucks" to "it's okay." It sounds like the expansion does offer some increased PVP opportunities, but what has your experience been with this aspect of the game? Are the battleground-type of competitions fun? How gear-dependent is PVP in Rift? Does skill play a decently-large part in PVP results? Are the different classes relatively balanced?

Rift is not a good game for PvP, don't get me wrong the fundamentals are there and it could of been good, the mechanics of the combat provide a sound basis for good, fun PvP, the design of the warfronts (battlegrounds) are mostly decent enough, but pretty much everything else goes against making PvP fun, which has led to the PvP population collapsing, which has basically made it impossible to solve some issues.

For example there is quite a power gap between a fresh max level player and one who has been there a while (it was once a much bigger gap), it took a long time to rank / gear up and it just tuned people away (being flattened by someone who coudl do 3 times the damage was not fun, nor was it fun facerolling peopel who could not fight back), eventually they implemented matched warfronts which grouped ranks in bands, unfortunately they did this about 6 months too late and over half the PvP players had left the game, which resulted in not enough people to match, so a lot of warfronts were still unmatched, more peolpe left.

This was one of many problems others include (at various times):

- PvE raid gear being bettter then PvP for PvP
- difficulty for pre-mades to face other pre-mades (huge waits)
- and conversely pre-mades facerolling pugs
- terrible class balance, which is in part to due to the soul system and having a zillion skills / combinations to balance, in part due to Trion generally treating PvP as a distant second to PvE and well Trion jsut don't seem very good at balance.
- Making some chronically bad decisions that have been shown to fail in other games, then taking forever to fix them, e.g - 40/50% passively applied healing debuffs, this really was a big sign that they didnt have a clue when it came to PvP and caused many to leave.

All of which has led to the point there are now so few people that are actually PvP focused, it is impossible to mend, nor worth Trion's time.

Originally Posted by garyscmh

3. GRIND. I'll be honest: I hate the "collect ten bear asses" grind and I refuse to do dailies, I just hate having to repeat content to earn something. How much of an honest factor is this in the Rift leveling/gearing process? Can you become competitive without having to grind over the same content over and over in order to gear up?

No, Rift is quite grindy, they've reduced the grind, but you will still need to grind rep, PA, rank, do dailys, levelling will seem slow if you have just come from GW2 and yes most quests are collect / activate 10 of these or kill 10 of these.

I think it's been quite apparent that that Rift is not aiming for the PVP crowd and you're just regurgitating the things we already know about Rift's stance on PvP it's meant as gear progressed PvP system and was never designed for anything but that. Conquest and warfronts can be actually very fun once you've slugged through progression grind that is know as PvP in Rift.

I think Rift learned very early on that the PvP crowd is very fickle and difficult to please and rightly so since MMORPG's are in my opinion not designed for competitive PvP. All the locust PvPers fled to GW2 and as I monitor that game too it seems to falling slowly to the wayside so for many of the GW2 PvPers new shinning light is Planetside 2 and other PvP rich featured new games. I think GW2 dropped the ball on PvP in their "window of opportunity" to make it work while others have and will go back to games like LoL or Dota2. GW2 is going in band-aid mode atm to fix PVE which is clearly not Anets strong suit but we'll give them some time on that and see how it goes.

Rift's PVE is slick and feature packed and still trumps all the other PVE based MMO's in my opinion of course. The leveling grind currently in SL is the biggest setback that I think needs to be addressed and most likely will be soon. Population wise every NA server is in a good place and when zone event kicks in there are multiple raids doing the objectives in any zone. The game is working fine, populated and with Trions content philosophy I expect the game and the fans to be good and happy going forward. Sorry to rain on your post and yes the game can't be for everyone one.

I am on Bloodiron EU and to say its virtually empty is wrong, recently i have only had time to log on at really random hours and theres people running round all over the place even at off peak times, the lower level zones have got quite busy i mentored down to help a friend who has just started and we kept running across others.

I also mainly PvP and queues for warfronts are popping in 10 seconds and thats at half past 1 in the morning.

and half the stuff you posted is months late have you read the changes made in SL, either keep up to date or dont post

as a new player, i did not experience anything that i can define as epic. maybe there are epic quests but trion failed to make them reachable by new players leveling for the first time.

I've leveled three characters to 50, one to 30 and one to 20.

I got the crumbs for the epic quest chains on all of them. Heck, we Pugged Greenscale so much, I got the quest item from him on two different characters - and I only (at my peak) used to play 3x per week.

Just because you didn't stick with a story to the end doesn't mean the ending is not there.

How the heck you can skip complete dungeons while leveling is mind-boggling to me. It's all "new" content to a new player. I am flabbergasted at how you can just dismiss this.

Epic Quest is a term used in many mmo's to explain something "different", something "special". These quests all do. Most give epic quality mounts or gear.

I think it's been quite apparent that that Rift is not aiming for the PVP crowd and you're just regurgitating the things we already know about Rift's stance on PvP it's meant as gear progressed PvP system and was never designed for anything but that.

Apparently the OP doesn't, he asked specifically about PvP, I am givng him an honest answer, becasue frankly most of the responses have failed to address what he asked.

Originally Posted by Azuri

I think Rift learned very early on that the PvP crowd is very fickle and difficult to please...

They are no more fickle or difficult to please than than the "end game" PvE locusts, the only group that are easy to please and stick with an MMO (they don't spend months of the year raid logging or not even playing till the next expansion) are role players, people that like exploring, don't take "end game" too seriously, etc.

Furthermore in most MMORPGs PvPers are neglected in terms of resouce time compared to PvE, so normally they have more reason to leave.

In theory PvPers are far easier to deal with, becasue they do not require the same output of content as PvE locusts, if a game does it right it is much easier, EVE for example or looking at the othe rend of the spectrum and competitve balacned PvP LoL, the problem is most makers of MMORPGs can't seem to get past WoW 2.0, despite the fact all these WoW remakes end up losing most of their population, thus we have an MMORPG sector that is largely stagnant.

I'd also add not everyone is one or the other, my old guild in Rift lost several raiders, simply because they also enjoyed PVP and Rift was just not up to it on that score, this is one of the reasons WoW still holds on to players.

Originally Posted by Azuri

The game is working fine, populated and with Trions content philosophy I expect the game and the fans to be good and happy going forward. Sorry to rain on your post and yes the game can't be for everyone one.

NA may be better populated, EU has four servers, only one of which is busy. Rift is fine for PvE (though personally I find the 5 mans a bit dull and find the lack of need for things like CC or a real requirement to multi-task a bit disappointing), Rift is poor for PvP, which is why the PVP servers have died off at a far faster rate than the PvE ones.

Indeed one look at the Rift forums today and you can still see the same old issues and failings in regard to PvP, balance is horrible, healing has been nerfed to the point even people who do not usually complain (Tyraus) have started threads on it, they've brilliantly made it so top PvP gear is much, much worse than the top (or even bit below top) PvE gear in open world, there are still the same old issues with AFkers in WF, and so on.

---------- Post added 2012-11-23 at 04:34 PM ----------

Originally Posted by ratharold

I am on Bloodiron EU and to say its virtually empty is wrong, recently i have only had time to log on at really random hours and theres people running round all over the place even at off peak times, the lower level zones have got quite busy i mentored down to help a friend who has just started and we kept running across others.

No it's not busy, it is barely populated, go look at Riftstatus, you will see Icewatch or many of the US servers have had some population increases and register medium to high, some even have had login queues including Icewatch, the other three EU servers are still flatlining at low, without even any bump since SL was released, I just logged in to Bloodiron, there were 27 guardians between level 50-60, and 44 defiant, that is a very long way from busy.

Originally Posted by ratharold

I also mainly PvP and queues for warfronts are popping in 10 seconds and thats at half past 1 in the morning.

They pop at 1 am, because all you need is handful of people, because they introduced mercs because the queues were getting so long due to lack of population and then they merged the whole of the EU into one wargroup again to combat low population, which funnily enough made things worse on the EU English servers, because trying to communicate when some people can only speak French, others only German and others only English is often hopeless, so many English speakers (those that simply didn't leave the game) went to play on the US servers.

Originally Posted by ratharold

and half the stuff you posted is months late have you read the changes made in SL, either keep up to date or dont post

Not really, though feel free to give specifics as to the points which constitute half my post which are "out of date", rather than just providing empty rhetoic. I'd also suggest reading the post properly, because I don't think you have.

Not really, though feel free to give specifics as to the points which constitute half my post which are "out of date", rather than just providing empty rhetoic. I'd also suggest reading the post properly, because I don't think you have.

Sure

a. from the 2.0 Patch notes:

- Each slot is compared against the lowest set of PVP gear available.
- If your gear is less powerful its stats will be replaced with the Mercenary set.
- If the gear you have equipped lacks Valor and is more powerful its stats will be replaced with gear from the Mercenary set.

So yeah... Posters posting about PvE gear being OP in warfronts are, well.. wrong. And if you'd read the thread instead of quoting the title, you'd know that yourself. the arguement is that PvE gear is superior to PvP, to which the response is made: PvE for PvE, and PvP for PvP

b. there is exactly one thread.. count it, one, on the subject of afker's in WF's, with 5 posts in it, since SL has launched. you just driving by the threads to judge the status of the game in PvP?

c. The complaint thread on healers in PvP has players in equal proportion claiming that either Wf's are full of healers, or devoid of them. random groupings will result in random results. go figure? Additionally, this is hardly surprising since most healers are trying out the new SL Souls in a PvP Environment and tweaking builds accordingly - I myself and doing that with harbringer but normally go chloro in WF's. Short term issue is short term.

d. Bloodiron at 10:00 am

not including toons which are leveling from 1-49, ofc.

e. Warfronts don't take 1 sec to que (not sure what the problem is that they do) because of the mercenary system, but because Trion has put us all into a single super euro cluster- meaning that in addition to Merc, you are queing alongside all the german, french and english players.

{I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it. }

On the subject of server populations and the like, I actually would like to make a comment.

On the /who side of things, it maxes out at about 29-30 people per search, so there may be a lot more players in those brackets than you see.

I did a bit of adding things up for about 15 minutes on Faeblight, for the sake of curiosity, to see my population at about 8:30 server time, about 20 minutes ago actually, so for off peak hours, and the server being prime.

Outside of the level 50 and 60, which I couldn't estimate since they maxed out at searches, so I just did the minimum it could be per class, (Searching over each class, since past that, you can get a max of 120 people per search) I got about 1000 people, (986 or so)

Really, Now, about 1000 people on a server, about 500-600 of them at the 50-60 range, on basically the 2nd highest server early in the morning essentially, I think the population is a bit low persay, but definitely the game isn't a ghost town by any stretch.

(Note of course, I am probably not going to do this test again unless I really need to, but it was interesting, but I kinda want to see what the population is going to look like during prime time for players, which usually is at about 4-7ish I find.)

So yeah... Posters posting about PvE gear being OP in warfronts are, well.. wrong. And if you'd read the thread instead of quoting the title, you'd know that yourself. the arguement is that PvE gear is superior to PvP, to which the response is made: PvE for PvE, and PvP for PvP

Which is under the section where I specifically stated "at various times" and was in relation to why the PvP population has dropped far faster than the PvE pop. So yes currently in WF the PvP gear is now where it should be, best at PvP, the side effect is that it has now terrible for just normal PvE (quests, wolrd events, etc) with stats equivilent to level 58 green items. And that is still a one way street, raid gear gets transformed into the base level of PvP gear, whilst a PvPer doesn't have their gear magically transformed into a base set of raid gear.

Originally Posted by Antipathy

b. there is exactly one thread.. count it, one, on the subject of afker's in WF's, with 5 posts in it, since SL has launched. you just driving by the threads to judge the status of the game in PvP?

And? Most people don't even post in the forum, especially on a subject that has been posted on for 18 months and get's nothing done to solve the problem, or are you saying everyone loves AFKers on their team? On a sidenote I see they've removed the vote kick from instant adventures, is Trion run by an AFKer?

Originally Posted by Antipathy

c. The complaint thread on healers in PvP has players in equal proportion claiming that either Wf's are full of healers, or devoid of them. random groupings will result in random results. go figure? Additionally, this is hardly surprising since most healers are trying out the new SL Souls in a PvP Environment and tweaking builds accordingly - I myself and doing that with harbringer but normally go chloro in WF's. Short term issue is short term.

LOL, terrible imbalance in Rift is not a short term issue, it is a permanent issue, especially healing in PvP, but then this is the company that couldn't work out it would be impossible to balance healing with 40-50% healing debuffs that some of the time would be on a healer, other times wouldn't, absolutely clueless.

I mentioned the thread, because it has a couple of people (Tyrus for example) that are not the sort to complain about healing being weak, if he is complaining then you know there is an issue.

Not that it is a surprise Trion have a rputation as a comapny that overnerfs or overbuffs, from what I read and for the few peope I know who still play the game, pre-SL (1.11?) healing was hugely OP, so as usual it seems Trion has gone over the top in the nerf department.

Originally Posted by Antipathy

d. Bloodiron at 10:00 am

That doesn't tell me anything, other than there are about 30 people on the list if you don't filter by class.

Today at 6.30 pm, there are 44 defiants between 50-60, and 30 between 1-49, and to quote someone from the Rift forum thread on the naff stats for the upper tier of PvP weapons - "Bloodiron is the only English PVP server and it's a wasteland.".

That is a pathetic number of players for an MMO, for a game that has just released an expansion it is even worse.

Originally Posted by Antipathy

e. Warfronts don't take 1 sec to que (not sure what the problem is that they do) because of the mercenary system, but because Trion has put us all into a single super euro cluster- meaning that in addition to Merc, you are queing alongside all the german, french and english players.

The merc system had a far bigger impact than the Euro cluster, before the merc system you could often wait up to 30 mins (off-peak) / 8-15 mins (peak) on a defiant character when it went live it was typically under a minute. There is no problem with WFs popping quickly, the point was simply that Trion implementated measures to alleviate a falling population, something which a few can't seem to grasp and seem to be in denial about. There is however a problem with being put in groups where people can't speak the same language.

---------- Post added 2012-11-30 at 07:06 PM ----------

Originally Posted by Requiemcliff

On the /who side of things, it maxes out at about 29-30 people per search, so there may be a lot more players in those brackets than you see.

It maxes out at 30, they delibrately "gimped" it to try and stop people seeing the server population, however on three out of the four EU servers (especially Bloodiron and Argent) the populations are so low, that if you filter by class, very often they don't reach the 30 limit, so can indeed see how many are on between 50-60.

At 6.30 pm on Bloodiron there were 44 at level 50-60, and 30 from 1-49 (defiant side), this is the only EU English PvP server, hence the OP is looking at the wrong game for PvP.

Originally Posted by Requiemcliff

I did a bit of adding things up for about 15 minutes on Faeblight...

Which is NA, which I believe I stated had a healthy population from what I could see, though I still see NA is down to one PvP server and the PvP pop has collapsed in comparision to PvE.

Which is under the section where I specifically stated "at various times" and was in relation to why the PvP population has dropped far faster than the PvE pop. So yes currently in WF the PvP gear is now where it should be, best at PvP, the side effect is that it has now terrible for just normal PvE (quests, wolrd events, etc) with stats equivilent to level 58 green items. And that is still a one way street, raid gear gets transformed into the base level of PvP gear, whilst a PvPer doesn't have their gear magically transformed into a base set of raid gear.

you've transformed the discussion here into something completely different to what it was. They fixed the ongoing complaint of PvE gear in PvP which was the primary issue most PvPers complained about. the semantics and details really are grossly exaggerated if you think that PvP mercenary gear is equivalent to level 58 questing greens then you haven't actually taken a look at the gear and are just parroting things people have said in forums to express their frustrations that they can't PvE quite as well as PvEer's. PvP armor has less base stats than PvE gear but has a lot more armor, valor, vengeance, crit and Resists. you are hardly gimped in a PvE environment where you have much higher survivability and can absorb more damage. I'm not sure what to make of your second issue, its not clear to me what point you are trying to make.

Originally Posted by zurgs

And? Most people don't even post in the forum, especially on a subject that has been posted on for 18 months and get's nothing done to solve the problem, or are you saying everyone loves AFKers on their team?

My point was simple, its a non-issue and never has been. the game auto kicks players who go afk in BG's. I've personally never experienced afker's in BG's- anecdotal, I know. But if there's no reference to it anywhere, other than a single thread that has long since died on the official forums, then I'm not inclined t believe its a problem whatsoever.

Originally Posted by zurgs

LOL, terrible in balance in Rift is not a short term issue, it is a permanent issue, especially healing in WF, but then this is the company that couldn't work out it would be impossible to balance healing with 40-50% healing debuffs that some of the time would be on a healer, other times wouldn't, absolutely clueless.

I mentioned the thread, because it has a couple of people (Tyrus for example) that are not the sort to complain about healing being weak, if he is complaining then you know there is an issue.

Yet another issue that started as one thing and ended up being another. What does low healing throughput in BG's have to do with terrible balance across the board and this balance being a permanent concern? Healing in BG's is now based on the time it takes to cast the spell as a coefficient. Accordingly, instant heals are worthless, while heal casts are effective. A couple of people reporting that something out of their comfort zone isn't good is hardly a measure of the state of Healing in WF's. if you read the thread, there is an equal balance between negative and positive feedback on the change. I'm not sure why you are basing your judgement of this feature on one person's feedback. have you tried it yourself?

Originally Posted by zurgs

That doesn't tell me anything, other than there are about 30 people on the list if you don't filter by class.

Today at 6.30 pm, there are 44 defiants between 50-60, and 30 between 1-49, and to quote someone from the Rift forum thread on the naff stats for the upper tier of PvP weapons - "Bloodiron is the only English PVP server and it's a wasteland.".

That is a pathetic number of players for an MMO, for a game that has just released an expansion it is even worse.

the point is simple, anecdotal evidence is anecdotal. Bloodiron was one of the busiest servers before faction became fiction and a lot of players wanted those incentives and migrated accordingly. any similar change to any MMO would have the exact same results. I say this again and again, you don't like a server, move for free. Not like Trion has hesitated to shut down servers that don't work, and with changes to the very core of the game that impact PvP, you are bound to see people leave in droves to realms where they can make the best of their experiences. you really should go check out some of the low rated realms on some of the other behemoth MMO's before you judge. they can't boast 75 players on a realm at 6:30PM, yet don't shut down servers and happily charge you to migrate.

EDIT: Also, please refer to requiem's post above on how the /who system works. a /who 50-60 on blightweald shows 33 players when my guild alone has 28 online in that bracket.

Originally Posted by zurgs

The merc system had a far bigger impact than the Euro cluster, before the merc system you could often wait up to 30 mins (off-peak) / 8-15 mins (peak) on a defiant character when it went live it was typically under a minute. There is no problem with WFs popping quickly, the point was simply that Trion implementated measures to alleviate a falling population, something which a few can't seem to grasp and seem to be in denial about. There is however a problem with being put in groups where people can't speak the same language.

That has never been my experience on either your anecdotal wait times or the people not speaking the same language.
You would need to name people who are in denial about the fact that Trion is alleviating a population that has declined. people have said it outright, repeatedly. The point that everyone seems to grasp is that they have excelled in implementing measures to address population downturns, without resorting to F2P, reworking their content release schedule, or dipping into your wallet to do so. that makes us happy campers and we don't take criticism of these measures lightly, especially when other developers have done 0 - to address the exact same issues in their games.

Last edited by Antipathy; 2012-11-30 at 08:06 PM.

{I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it. }

you've transformed the discussion here into something completely different to what it was. They fixed the ongoing complaint of PvE gear in PvP which was the primary issue most PvPers complained about. the semantics and details really are grossly exaggerated if you think that PvP mercenary gear is equivalent to level 58 questing greens then you haven't actually taken a look at the gear and are just parroting things people have said in forums to express their frustrations that they can't PvE quite as well as PvEer's. PvP armor has less base stats than PvE gear but has a lot more armor, valor, vengeance, crit and Resists. you are hardly gimped in a PvE environment where you have much higher survivability and can absorb more damage. I'm not sure what to make of your second issue, its not clear to me what point you are trying to make.

Valor and vengenence are irrelevent in a PvE enviroment, resists are pretty usless outside of instances, people are complaining becasue the best PvP gear is now in relative terms much worse for doing quests / world events / farming than what it was pre-SL, that raiders at 60 get their gear magically transformed into half decent PvP gear in WF, yet it doesn't work the other way round, it is just another example of PvP being neglected in Rift and why I would not recommend the gaem to anyoen like teh OP who is interested in PvP.

Incidentally they have not fixed the issue, pre-60, bolstered raid gear is still better than PvP gear, furthermore to get infinity marks people are forced to PvE.

Originally Posted by Antipathy

My point was simple, its a non-issue and never has been. the game auto kicks players who go afk in BG's. I've personally never experienced afker's in BG's- anecdotal, I know. But if there's no reference to it anywhere, other than a single thread that has long since died on the official forums, then I'm not inclined t believe its a problem whatsoever.

You didn't have a point, you made some silly claim it is not an issue because there has only been one thread on it since Sl was released, there have been many threads on it over the life of Rift, they have done nothing to solve it, people are kicked AFk if they stand still and do absolutely nothing, anyone with a half brain cell that wishes to avoid being kicked simply makes a macro with their mouse/keyboard or uses a program like autohotkey, all they have to do is move every now and again or fire off the odd skill occasionally.

As for you not noticing, you don't appear to be very observant, do you, nor do much PvP.

Originally Posted by Antipathy

Yet another issue that started as one thing and ended up being another.

What are you on about, bad up and down balance is a premanant issue with Rift it is notorious for it, it hasn't suddenly become an issue just with SL.

Originally Posted by Antipathy

What does low healing throughput in BG's have to do with terrible balance across the board and this balance being a permanent concern?

You can;t grasp how healing output is part of balance, wow...

Originally Posted by Antipathy

Healing in BG's is now based on the time it takes to cast the spell as a coefficient. Accordingly, instant heals are worthless, while heal casts are effective. A couple of people reporting that something out of their comfort zone isn't good is hardly a measure of the state of Healing in WF's. if you read the thread, there is an equal balance between negative and positive feedback on the change. I'm not sure why you are basing your judgement of this feature on one person's feedback. have you tried it yourself?

I base it on a couple of people I trust rather than random scrubs, people who have in the past bascially told people to learn to play when others have stated healig is too weak at vrious times and have in the past stated healing is OP, most people on the forum I wouldn't trust as far as I can throw them in regard to being objective about class balance. I also listen to the few PvP orientated people I know who still play the game, again they all say damage is out of control compared to healing, that they can now solo healers (even good ones), that when they play melee it is often really painful because generally there is a lack of healers, etc.

Originally Posted by Antipathy

the point is simple, anecdotal evidence is anecdotal. Bloodiron was one of the busiest servers before faction became fiction and a lot of players wanted those incentives and migrated accordingly. any similar change to any MMO would have the exact same results. I say this again and again, you don't like a server, move for free. Not like Trion has hesitated to shut down servers that don't work, and with changes to the very core of the game that impact PvP, you are bound to see people leave in droves to realms where they can make the best of their experiences. you really should go check out some of the low rated realms on some of the other behemoth MMO's before you judge. they can't boast 75 players on a realm at 6:30PM, yet don't shut down servers and happily charge you to migrate.

Anyone that wants to go check can log into Bloodiron virtually any time they wish use the class / level filters and see how few people are online, the same goes for Argent (and to a lesser extent Blighweald), or they can go to Riftstatus.net and see the login info polled every 5 mins, where they will see the only server that has had an increase since SL is Icewatch and the other three are still flatlining at low, Rifts English EU population has collapsed, especially on the PvP side quite why you are in such denial about this is, when it is there for anyoen to see, is a mystery.

Oh yes this is the newest post on the Bloodiron subforum:

Elysium is moving from Bloodiron
Greetings,

After one week of the expansions release we saw that Bloodiron´s population is empty and we started to have problems.

The economy of the server is crap,our low lvl people cant level up easily and we cant even do what we like to do because of the shard´s situation.

Many of our members started to complain and some started to be inactive,even though the game is very nice.

We dont see and any other efforts so we can bring people to the server and for that we desided to leave.

Originally Posted by Antipathy

That has never been my experience on either your anecdotal wait times or the people not speaking the same language.
You would need to name people who are in denial about the fact that Trion is alleviating a population that has declined. people have said it outright, repeatedly. The point that everyone seems to grasp is that they have excelled in implementing measures to address population downturns, without resorting to F2P, reworking their content release schedule, or dipping into your wallet to do so. that makes us happy campers and we don't take criticism of these measures lightly, especially when other developers have done 0 - to address the exact same issues in their games.

People can go through old threads on the Rift forum if they wish to find examples of how long people were waiting pre-merc, rather than beleive your fanboy denials. Yes it is good they have at least added mechnisms to cope with falling popualtion / queue times, however it at the same time shows the issue, Rift is not a good game for PvP, the PvP population has absolutely collapsed (not that the PvE pop in English EU is healthy either, but still in better shape than PvP), no one objective would recommend Rift to someone primarily interested in PvP as teh OP seems to be, to do so is just dishonest.

And all that is without going into things like how dead open world PvP is or how few resources are put towards PvP in comparision to PvE.

Nope, not really, for example stating your claim was 'silly' on the basis your argument was on one thread since SL and ignored all the threads before is not ad hominem.

Originally Posted by Antipathy

I"see what they say on the forums", and "X sucks because person Y says so".

Yet it is okay for you on a forum to say "X is wonderful, because I say so"...

I am sure people will make up their own mind, by looking at the facts, which they can see by getting a trial account (though best of luck waiting for a WF queue to pop at that level) and using the online search tool, or seeing the data at Riftstatus or indeed looking at the PvP sub-forums and will see a long history of many issues I've stated from population collapse to AFKers, from lack of PvP content / features /attention to terrible balance, the flawed design of two faction PvP, etc and that they still exist today, or indeed by looking at many of the gaming sites on the net, where they will be told Rift is not game for you if you are primarily interested in PvP.

Or simply seeing what ex-PvPers say about the game, especially those that are regarded as very reasonable like Taugrim for instance.

That the game has gone from about an equal number of PvE & PvP servers down to 1 PvP server in NA (lowest pop NA server) and 1 near empty PvP server in EU (English language), says it all about Rift as a game for PvP.

Nope, not really, for example stating your claim was 'silly' on the basis your argument was on one thread since SL and ignored all the threads before is not ad hominem.

Its clear you not only attack on a personal level, but gloss over what you feel like; fine.

Originally Posted by zurgs

Yet it is okay for you on a forum to say "X is wonderful, because I say so"...

If that is in fact, what I did say, then sure, you can make that claim. pointing out what Trion has done and pointing out that you can't argue based on anecdotal evidence is hardly a proclamation that everything is "wonderful because I say so". Then again, isn't that exactly what these forums are for, for me to proclaim exactly, and as loudly as I want, what I think is wonderful?

Originally Posted by zurgs

I am sure people will make up their own mind, by looking at the facts, which they can see by getting a trial account (though best of luck waiting for a WF queue to pop at that level) and using the online search tool, or seeing the data at Riftstatus or indeed looking at the PvP sub-forums and will see a long history of many issues I've stated from population collapse to AFKers, from lack of PvP content / features /attention to terrible balance, the flawed design of two faction PvP, etc and that they still exist today, or indeed by looking at many of the gaming sites on the net, where they will be told Rift is not game for you if you are primarily interested in PvP.

Or simply seeing what ex-PvPers say about the game, especially those that are regarded as very reasonable like Taugrim for instance.

That the game has gone from about an equal number of PvE & PvP servers down to 1 PvP server in NA (lowest pop NA server) and 1 near empty PvP server in EU (English language), says it all about Rift as a game for PvP.

Yes they will. Only its very clear that that same discussion can't be had with you without a full fledged argument against the internet in its entirety. I'm not going to argue against what ex-pvpers have to say, or riftstatus (Monitoring Low/High/Med/full or whatever is very informative) or what the Vatican's official website has to say about Rift.

For whatever reason, you don't seem to see that Rift has moved away from the PvP concept in the open world altogether; and there are significantly higher advantages to PvE servers than PvP ones. Since 1.10 was announced, several guilds on PvP servers migrated to PvE ones. you can check that for yourself in the Bloodiron and seastone realm sub-forums, the dates in which guilds announced their moves are there for all to see.

Finally, seven of the 11 patches in classic Rift have either introduced PvP features or new BG's or PvP Concepts (such as Conquest) - to say that this is an ignored aspect of the game is clearly a fallacy in every regard.

Bottom line is this, I don't really care what the threads say, I don't care what ex-pvpers say, The only PvP feature Ive ever enjoyed in an MMO has been conquest, and I'm not sure I can discuss the merits of PvP with you on any level because, frankly, you've compiled a list of what is considered to be universal PvP problems in every MMO out there and your justifications for why they apply to Rift are based entirely what other people say, not a single personal insight or example is provided other than random checks on a PvP shard outside of peak hours or raid times - every single time you've posted.

{I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it. }